Towed about four weeks after returning for her senior year, Stephanie Boyle has a message for UI students with cars: Make sure you know Iowa City’s new parking rules.

She didn’t. And what she got was a $96 towing charge in addition to more than $50 in city parking fees, she said.

“I was very surprised,” she said. “My roommate had gotten a ridiculous number of tickets [last year] — I didn’t know there was a different rule.”

Now her car is parked for good at her family’s home in Naperville, Ill.

While many UI students were gone this summer, Iowa City replaced the $5 flat rate for expired meters with a graduated fine system.

The first citation is a warning, the second is $5, the third and fourth are $10, the fifth and sixth are $15, the seventh and eighth are $20, and the ninth and subsequent citations are $25. The cost of parking in a commercial loading zone also increased from $10 to $25.

Several UI students and residents parking at metered spots last week said they didn’t know about the change.

The ticket breakdown, however, is printed on the back of parking tickets and on the city’s website.

“It’s my own fault that I didn’t pay the extra 50 cents to have more time on my meter,” she said. “But I think if officials are going to change [the fees], they definitely need to make it more known.”

She said her vehicle was towed about 30 minutes before she retrieved it; by the time everything was paid, she forked over around $240.

“It wasn’t the greatest day of my life, but I most certainly won’t get a ticket again — at least any time in the near future,” she said.

The goal of the new fee system is to change the behavior of long-term parkers on downtown streets in order to make more space for shoppers, said Chris O’Brien, Iowa City Transportation Services director.

But it’s too early to assess the effect of the new system downtown, and O’Brien didn’t know if more people were getting towed.

“It’s possible,” he said. “If it looks like tows have spiked, we’ll obviously have to re-evaluate that.”

Of the nearly 16,500 expired-meter violations since the policy changed on July 1, a large percentage have been warning tickets and $5 citations, he said. Overall, meter violations are down.

He said the new system should be beneficial for people who typically follow the rules and make mistakes once or twice a year. As of right now, the city will reset the graduated fees on July 1 and Jan. 1, meaning people can get two warning tickets per year.

“For people who have two-hour classes and want to get coffee, the parking garage is a better option,” he said.

In the upcoming months, O’Brien said, he will look at the different patterns, including the number of citations issued and parking garage use, and decide what changes worked well and what wasn’t effective.

The city’s transportation division will soon make an announcement about all its recent changes, O’Brien said.